Board index ‹ God

[Hand in Glove]

I just can't find myself able to believe in a god. It doesn't make sense to me, and it doesn't make sense in my world. I've never seen him or heard him. I have no sense of him. When I have tried "he" has been unresponsive to the point of not being there. I give up. I'm convinced now that God doesn't exist.

[jimwalton]

Let me try to approach it this way you. I'll just make references, though, assuming that you are educated and knowledgeable.

We know that as far as "being" (the pondering of metaphysics), the basic philosophical question is why there is something rather than nothing. On top of that we have a dilemma of personality: humans are personal beings, supposedly from a mechanistic, impersonal source. Along with that we know from logic that no finite point has any meaning unless it has an infinite reference point (Jean-Paul Sartre). A third conundrum is epistemology: how do we know that we know what we know?

There are two directions we can go in: either there's no sense to any of it, and everything is meaningless, irrational, and absurd, or there is some kind of answer that is both rational and able to be communicated. There are only three possible directions:

1. Everything that exists has come out of absolutely nothing: no energy, no mass, no motion, no personality. Nothing Nothing. I don't think anyone believes this.

2. Everything that exists came out of something, but it was impersonal: just energy, chemicals, velocity, mass. If you accept that, then there's no explanation for personality. We're just necessarily impersonal—the result of impersonal matter plus impersonal time by impersonal chance. Nothing has any meaning, because meaning can only come from free agency, which is personal.

3. Everything that exists has a personal beginning. It makes perfect sense that personality came from personality, meaning from intent, and reason from reason.

The most sufficient answer to being, meaning, reason, and personality is a personal, meaningful, reasoning source. Now there is an infinite reference point to give meaning to the particulars. And if you disagree with this, you are claiming that personality came from the impersonal, meaning came from randomness, and reason arose out of nothing. Frankly, I find that much harder to make sense of. Even our scientific knowledge gets passed through the grid of reason, personal-ness, and meaning (purpose). But if we accept personality, meaning, and reasoning, now we also have a basis for epistemology (knowing). Otherwise, I can't even trust my own thoughts, because the process of natural selection knows nothing of and cares nothing for truth, but only survival.

Add on top of that that there are about 8 reasonable arguments for the existence of God that show that belief in such a being is a rational and logical practice, not at all out of sync with what we see in our world. One of them is that the universe displays some signs of design, which in our observations is always the effect of a purposeful designer.

On top of this I would add the great hopelessness and angst that is growing in our world, right alongside the rise of atheism. The heavy metal songs on the radio scream of purposelessness, hopelessness, fear, violence, and despair. Political corruption is rampant. It's hard for me to believe that the path of impersonality, chance, and irrationality make more sense to you than the possibility of theism, which has a lot of reason behind it.

My guess is that you used to believe in God, but somewhere along the way you became disillusioned, probably because God just didn't seem to be there. Life seemed too random and difficult, and you found God to be so unresponsive that he might as well not exist, and you walked away in complete disgust, and you stopped believing. Maybe there are logical flaws in scientific naturalism, and maybe you can't account for personality and reason, but now that makes more sense to you than a God who just doesn't seem to be there.

If there is no infinite reference point, no God, no spiritual realities, then we are all just machines, victims of happenstance, and there is no meaning, no purpose, and no logically even no reason. And yet I think we all know that's not an accurate picture. No one can truly live out their lives on that foundation. What makes more sense is that you had skewed expectations about God and the life he offers, and when it didn't pan out according to your understandings and expectations, you turned away in disgust. The problem is that leaves you with an irrational alternative.

[Hand in Glove]

> absurd

Assuming you mean this philosophically, Albert Camus addresses this well in "The Myth of Sisyphus". In it Camus considers absurdity as a confrontation, an opposition, a conflict or a "divorce" between two ideals. Specifically, he defines the human condition as absurd, as the confrontation between man's desire for significance, meaning and clarity on the one hand, and the silent, cold universe on the other. He continues that there are specific human experiences evoking notions of absurdity. Such a realization or encounter with the absurd leaves the individual with a choice: suicide, a leap of faith or recognition. He concludes that recognition is the only defensible option.

He rejects suicide outright as a surrender.

The "leap of faith" he sees as an elusion, avoiding absurdity by ignoring it. In Sisyphus he says: "The absurd encounter can also arouse a 'leap of faith', a term derived from one of Kierkegaard's early pseudonyms, Johannes de Silentio (although the term was not used by Kierkegaard himself), where one believes that there is more than the rational life (aesthetic or ethical). To take a 'leap of faith', one must act with the 'virtue of the absurd' (as Johannes de Silentio put it), where a suspension of the ethical may need to exist. This faith has no expectations, but is a flexible power initiated by a recognition of the absurd. [Although one, at some point, recognizes or encounters the existence of the Absurd, in response, one actively ignores it.] Camus, however, states that because the leap of faith escapes rationality and defers to abstraction over personal experience, the leap of faith is not absurd. Camus considers the leap of faith as 'philosophical suicide, rejecting both this and physical suicide.'

Lastly, a person can choose to embrace his or her own absurd condition. According to Camus, one's freedom—and the opportunity to give life meaning—lies in the recognition of absurdity. If the absurd experience is truly the realization that the universe is fundamentally devoid of absolutes, then we as individuals are truly free. "To live without appeal", as he puts it, is a philosophical move to define absolutes and universals subjectively, rather than objectively. The freedom of humans is thus established in a human's natural ability and opportunity to create his own meaning and purpose; to decide (or think) for him- or herself. The individual becomes the most precious unit of existence, as he or she represents a set of unique ideals which can be characterized as an entire universe in its own right. In acknowledging the absurdity of seeking any inherent meaning, but continuing this search regardless, one can be happy, gradually developing his or her own meaning from the search alone.

Like the mythological Sisyphus, eternally pushing a boulder up a hill only to see it roll down again, we must each of us struggle to make our own meaning. He suggests imagining that Sisyphus is happy with his labours and setting about our own with the same spirit.

> On top of this I would add the great hopelessness and angst that is growing in our world

I see no evidence of that. There are a lot of awful things happening but there always have been. Our times are not unique or over-burdened.

> Add on top of that that there are about 8 reasonable arguments for the existence of God

I have seen no evidence or heard any convincing arguments for the supernatural in any form.

> My guess is that you used to believe in God

I have never believed in God and know and have known very few people who do. I know quite a few Quakers, some of whom are vaguely deist, and have a very good Sikh friend and a devout Muslim friend.

> If there is no infinite reference point, no God, no spiritual realities,

Sartre was an atheist, his infinite reference point wasn't a God.

> then we are all just machines, victims of happenstance, and there is no meaning, no purpose, and no possibly even no reason

We are living machines and we are the victims of happenstance but I'm far more optimistic living machine than you. We make our own reason.

> What makes more sense is that you had skewed expectations about God and the life he offers, and when it didn't pan out according to your understandings and expectations, you turned away in disgust

The bible tells us faith will move mountains and believers will heal the sick. This is not the case. Paul says Jesus will return "soon". This was not the case. Every measurable promise made in the Bible has proved to be false. The behaviour of Christians and Christian institutions throughout history as well as today have also been exactly what you'd expect from men and their institutions. My expectations of God are nil, as I don't believe He exists and the failure of the words of the Bible to come to pass and the inability of Christians to behave any differently from anyone else are part of the reason I don't believe.

[jimwalton]

Thanks for good discussion. As an existentialist, Camus came to live his life in total despair, claiming that life and the universe had no meaning. Recognizing that the world was a terrible place, he concluded that our best choice was to recognize the absurdity and then try to redeem it by living in love for one another. Ironically, love can only exist if there is personality, meaning, purpose, and free will. Existentialist absurdity and brotherly love are inconsistent to the point of being contradictory, and logically incompatible. (Camus has been rightly criticized for this inconsistency. His answer betrays that he doesn't even believe in his own conclusions, and no one can live by them.) His position, that you seem to agree (by your argument), is self-contradictory.

You're right that awful things have always happened, and our era is no different. But possibly it is. More people were killed during the 20th century than in any other century, between the world wars, genocides, Hitler's holocaust, Stalin's slaughter of his own people, Pol Pot's killing fields, Rwanda, etc. Granted that other eras have been horrible also: The Black Plague, the Crusades, and the Spanish Inquisition, to name a few. We can at least safely say that things aren't getting better.

You're right that Sartre was an atheist and that his infinite reference point wasn't God. But it's still true that the particulars only have meaning in the universals. He at least understood that with an impersonal beginning, the particulars have no meaning, and that is an untenable position to hold in real life; it contradicts with real life, as both he and Camus recognized.

> I have seen no evidence or heard any convincing arguments for the supernatural in any form.

Hm. That surprises me for someone of your intellect. I would think you'd be more familiar with the logical arguments. Though they are not airtight, they clearly lead to the "beyond a reasonable doubt" criterion.

It seems you have been hasty to reject the Bible without grasping what it is saying. Every measurable promise made in the Bible has proved to be false?

Gn. 9.15: "Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life."
Gn. 15.7 (God to Abraham and his progeny): "I will give you this land to possess it."
Jer. 29.10: After 70 years, my people will return to this land.
Matt. 24.2 (Jesus about Jerusalem): Not one stone will be left upon another.

There are actually hundreds, if not thousands of these, in the Bible. I'm sensing that you haven't done your homework in this area.

> The behaviour of Christians and Christian institutions throughout history as well as today have also been exactly what you'd expect from men and their institutions

Christians have started more hospitals, schools, provided water, hygiene, child sponsorships, and medical clinics than all other sources combined. Christians continue to advocate for AIDS victims, human trafficking, justice for the poor, child abuse, and sexual abuse. There are organizations such as AJS: Association for a More Just Society. I think that perhaps you know very few people who believe in God has given you a caricatured and inaccurate view of Christians and Christianity. But I also sense that your rejection of God is more visceral than it is academic. Something sticks in your craw more than creates a barrier in your mind.